Time wrote "In this sort of book, there is no total to arrive at. Nothing makes any waking sense. But it makes a powerful, deeply disturbing dream sense. Nothing in the book seems to have been thrown in arbitrarily, merely to confuse, as is the case when inept authors work at illusion. Pynchon appears to be indulging in the fine, pre-Freudian luxury of dreams dreamt for the dreaming. The book sails with majesty through caverns measureless to man. What does it mean? Who, finally, is V.? Few books haunt the waking or the sleeping mind, but this is one. Who, indeed?"[3]
Tony Tanner considered the novel an exploration of the plots individuals ascribe to the ambivalent universe they have no choice but to confront, during a 20th-century period in which genuine communication between individuals has been eroded and in which ambiguous societal forces are at work (intentionally or inadvertently) towards a state of entropy; "SHROUD asks, 'Has it occurred to you there may be no more standards for crazy or sane, now that it's started?' And Benny answers, 'What, for Christ's sake?' What the 'it' is that has started (if there is an 'it'), what common process links remote imperialist incidents with contemporary automation, tourism, Hitler, and the Whole Sick Crew (if there is any linking common process)—this is what the whole book is about."[4]
Writing in The New York Times, George Plimpton called Pynchon "a young writer of staggering promise", lauding his "vigorous and imaginative style", "robust humor" and "tremendous reservoir of information".[5]
In 1964, the novel was awarded a William Faulkner Foundation Award for best debut novel.
There is an interesting connection to So Many Doors, a 1951 crime novel written by Oakley Hall, an author for whom Pynchon has expressed admiration. In that novel a character named Vasilia Baird is murdered and it is revealed that many suspects knew her only as "V."
